


you do not complain.

by andthemoon



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Lowercase, M/M, POV Second Person, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 19:46:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19116481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andthemoon/pseuds/andthemoon
Summary: you are always surrounded by people who fight and people who live.but to you life and war are two words irrevocably entwined with each other; you cannot tell them apart anymore.(maybe you never could.)— who are you to complain when your shoulders have been artfully crafted to carry the weight of world?





	you do not complain.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written months ago, when I was a sweet summer child not yet ruined by the disaster that was Steve's character arc in Avengers: Endgame - you can probably tell.
> 
> I just spontaneously decided to share this out of spite; I'm way too attached to Steve Rogers to let some lazy writing taint him for me.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

*

you open your eyes for the very first time to a humid summer day in brooklyn and the first thing you have to learn is the fight against your own body.

so you learn. you don't complain.

someone like you only has two choices, you quickly realize that; lose the battle or fall in love with it.

you look at your mother's soothing hands and kind eyes, look at the rich, radiant burst of color that the sunset paints onto your dusty window like it's a canvas, look at the bright-eyed boy next to you making up ridiculous stories to get a single tired smile from your weak lips. (sitting on his hands because if he doesn't, he might grab yours - you know this, because you are familiar with that particular urge. and as far as you can tell, boys are not supposed do that with each other. you don't understand the reason for that and tend to have little patience for rules you don't understand. you wish you had the strength to reach out and take his hand yourself, but your body is still too weak. so you just close your eyes and let his smooth voice enwrap your aching joints like velvet.)

it's a moment you will remember for a longer time than you could ever fathom back then; you'll remember that moment as the one that solidified the ever-present refusal to give up, molded it into something stronger, more deeply rooted.

a desire to stay alive for more soothing motherly touches and radiant sunsets and ridiculous stories and small, secretive smiles. you will not lose the fight, you swear then and there.

so you fall in love with it.

 

the truth is that you were a ruthless fighter even before you knew how to throw a punch. there was no other choice; you fought to be seen and to take up space with your treacherously frail body. hell, you fought to _breathe_.

perhaps you never could have turned to a life of tranquility and lightness from that, anyway. the thought makes you halt sometimes, makes you wonder; has the possibility of peace ever existed for you? you'll never know.

(you do learn to throw punches though, eventually.)

 

in the end, you don't get too many soothing touches from your mother before she goes where you can't follow, or time to moon over the colors of the sky.

you are stuck in an unfamiliar body that feels borrowed, stuck in a war even bigger than your anger and you can feel the clock ticking behind your ears, in your chest, in gunshots.

you assume the time that is running out of your big, borrowed palms like sand is yours; and you can live with that. you don't complain. you do everything you can to stay, but you are prepared to go if it's not enough.

what you are not prepared for is losing the bright-eyed boy to a cold, white, unforgiving pit of nothingness.

what you are not prepared for is being too weak to grab his hand once again.

 

you try to follow him. you fail.

 

in a cruel, almost ironic twist of fate, the clock that you could have sworn was counting down your last heartbeats ends up mocking you by holding you captive in ice; time leaves you behind. you're a fallen tree in a forest that continues to grow and change and bloom without concern.

until one day, you're dug up again.

 

while you were buried in the cruel embrace of ice, millions of starry-eyed strangers seem to have talked themselves into falling in love with your tragedy - much like the way you had talked yourself into falling in love with the war an entirely too long time ago.

they call you "man out of time" and gently lower their admiration onto your head like a brittle, misplaced crown.

(you wear the dull ache of having missed out like a second skin. you don't complain.)

 

it's like you can physically feel the force of gravity pull on your bones every single day. it's the weight of almost an entire century of war; two lifetimes denying you even the simple mercy of a quiet moment, just to close your eyes and mourn the fact that it always seems to be blood adorning the canvas of your hands instead of the expensive red paint your mother never got the chance to to buy for you.

 you are always surrounded by people who fight and people who live. but to you life and war are two words irrevocably entwined with each other; you cannot tell them apart anymore.

(maybe you never could.)

 

you persevere; you do not complain.

 

clothes still seem ill-fitting on your body and pencils forever feel oddly small and wrong in your large, strong hands. people's appreciative gazes that linger on you still feel like fancy love letters adressed at someone else that accidentally keep landing on your door step.

 you feel more at ease with a gun pointed at you than you do in front of a mirror.

 you do not complain.

(who are you to complain when your shoulders have been artfully crafted to carry the weight of world?)

so you keep fighting; return to the open, waiting arms of the war.

(it was your first love after all. and the only love they never took away from you.)

 

 

* * *

 

 


End file.
